Just finishing the duology I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves. The first was quite good, the second a bit more meandering but I think I'm just tiring of the subject/voice after two reasonably sized books.

I just finished reading Dietrich & Riefenstahl : Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives by Karin Wieland (translated by Shelley Frisch). This dual biography examines two complex lives that began alike but ended on opposite sides of the century's greatest conflict. Both women were prodigies of will, discipline, endurance, self-reinvention, and exaltation of the body in all its muscular, androgynous, pose-striking pagan glory. Both had their grand passions, but neither abandoned ambition for the sake of love. The author shows that, in their later years, both women grappled with controlling their image: Riefenstahl by pursuing an additional career in photography, and Dietrich by eventually hiding at home as her famous beauty was ravaged by time. (Summary edited from my library description of the book.)

Surprisingly, I found Riefenstahl the more interesting of the two women, even though she was an unlikable, manipulative, and despicable person and a consummate liar.

Right now, I am reading Reducing the Risk of Black Swans: Using the Science of Investing to Capture Returns with Less Volatility by Larry Swedroe and Kevin Grogan.

This is a collection of reviews of different books, loosely centered on finance and investing but including investor psychology, philosophy, and broader related topics. The brief reviews and excerpts might help you find ones that would be of interest to you.

Egan - visit from the goon squad - boring and self-indulgent with unlikable narcissistic characters to boot. Can't believe this won the Pulitzer.

Saunders - tenth of December - short stories - credit for writing about a difficult subject (poverty and class and jealousy) with a searingly funny voice. Some stories better than others. Not my cup of tea.

The book combines two of my favorite topics: the Great Detective and Cognitive Psychology of Daniel Kahneman and many others. I was familiar with much of the research referenced by Konnikova, but it was interesting to see it in the context of Holmes's decision making.

Victoria

WINNER of the 2015 Boglehead Contest. |
Every joke has a bit of a joke. ... The rest is the truth. (Marat F)

I am re-reading Manias, Panics and Crashes by Charles Kindleberger. For about the fifth time.

Getting tuned up for the next market crisis.

Dr. Kindleberger was an economics professor at MIT for many years. His book analyzes the drivers and circumstances involved in financial panics and their aftermath. I credit the book with giving me a rough roadmap and insight on what to do, and not to do, during late 2008/early 2009 when financial markets were a bit unsettled. That insight proved very valuable.

Thanks Doc.

Dr. Kindleberger had minimal patience with the "over numeracy" that plagues the economics profession, and identified the foundations of financial panics in human psychology and pervasive biases. A very astute man and a fine and lucid writer.

Along with The Intelligent Investor, Winning the Loser's Game and Where Are the Customer's Yacht's? it has had the most influence on my investment philosophy.

Edward Chancellor's Devil Take the Hindmost is pretty good also.

Happy reading

W B

"Through chances various, through all vicissitudes, we make our way." Virgil, The Aeneid

WildBill wrote:Dr. Kindleberger had minimal patience with the "over numeracy" that plagues the economics profession, and identified the foundations of financial panics in human psychology and pervasive biases. A very astute man and a fine and lucid writer.

Remarkable physics achievements in the early 20th century have produced "physics envy" in other sciences. There was a strong push to put sciences on the mathematical and experimental basis, even where there was no natural fit. Thus, psychology was dominated in 1920-1950 by behaviorism which focused on expressed behaviors and disregarded reasoning behind behaviors. Paul Samuelson has mathematized economics; the stated reason for his Nobel was that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in economic theory."

Dr. Kindleberger and Dr. Samuelson were colleagues at MIT for probably 40 years. I'm sure they had some interesting discussions.

I spent some time in academia as an economics grad student before coming to my senses. Your description of "physics envy" is dead on.

My description would be more down home Texas. Many economists chase after mathematical techniques like a rabbit dog with ADD. Chase this one for a while, chase that one for a while, then on to another. Lots of action, lots of fun, impressive, but no rabbit.

WB

"Through chances various, through all vicissitudes, we make our way." Virgil, The Aeneid

Back in May, we had a thread about good books to learn about WW2. This phenomenal treatise should be added to that list. I consider on par with or better than The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; in other words, a must read for a dedicated amateur historian. As a bonus, Bullock provides a crystal clear, detailed exposition of the Russian revolution of 1917 and a scorecard of all its important "players" (and how Stalin slowly disposed of them, one by one, until no opposition to him remained).

A large family of adopted children has lost their mother. One son, the black sheep of the family, was convicted of his mother's murder and has died in prison. No one had any trouble believing this rat to be guilty.

Two years later with new evidence it turns out that his alibi was true, he was not guilty. The man who confirmed the alibi tells the family the son is innocent, but the family is not thrilled. The family is now in turmoil, since it is now clear that one of the other survivors is a murderer. Practically everyone had a motive and an opportunity.

"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein |
Wiki article link:Getting Started

If you enjoy his books, try the historical fiction by Alan Furst, if you haven't already. He is a superb writer and has done extensive research for his books, which are mostly set in and around Paris in WW II.

I liked The Polish Officer the most, but all of his books are excellent.

W B

"Through chances various, through all vicissitudes, we make our way." Virgil, The Aeneid

Finally got to a book on my long list, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande. About the smart ways to use written checklists in medicine, flying, finance/investing, and other professions. Of special interest here are his interviews with value investors Mohnish Pabrai, Guy Spier, and a third who did not want to be identified by name. They use checklists to temper what Pabrai calls "greed mode" and Spier calls "cocaine brain" triggered by the prospect of making huge amounts of money. Yet even though the three said checklists helped them avoid serious mistakes, Gawande also writes about strong resistance to using written checklists from others in various fields.

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Just finished "Classic Feynman". A collection of vignettes from a wonderful, amazing character. Nobel laureate, iconoclast, irrepressible questioner: Richard P. Feynman, an MIT/Princeton trained Los Alamos theoretical physicist, Cal Tech professor, Challenger space shuttle investigator, one who didn't give a whit what anyone else thought of him, . Just a delight to read. Included an audio CD of some of his personal recollections of stories and his zany behavior... great book, can't go wrong.

Big Dutch wrote:Just finishing the duology I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves. The first was quite good, the second a bit more meandering but I think I'm just tiring of the subject/voice after two reasonably sized books.

I too read both of these a year or so ago and found them quite interesting. (I still need to go find the old PBS series at library which I think was based on his books.) I subsequently moved on a few centuries and read a variety of books by Desmond Seward and then Dan Jones, both regarding later English and French history. Worthwhile authors to explore, I found.

Angst wrote:Just finished "Classic Feynman". A collection of vignettes from a wonderful, amazing character. Nobel laureate, iconoclast, irrepressible questioner: Richard P. Feynman, an MIT/Princeton trained Los Alamos theoretical physicist, Cal Tech professor, Challenger space shuttle investigator, one who didn't give a whit what anyone else thought of him, . Just a delight to read. Included an audio CD of some of his personal recollections of stories and his zany behavior... great book, can't go wrong.

If you are entranced by Feynman, then you are going to have to read the biography Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, by James Gleick. I wish Feynman had lived to be 120 years old. Who knows what else he would have come up with?

Angst wrote:Just finished "Classic Feynman". A collection of vignettes from a wonderful, amazing character. Nobel laureate, iconoclast, irrepressible questioner: Richard P. Feynman, an MIT/Princeton trained Los Alamos theoretical physicist, Cal Tech professor, Challenger space shuttle investigator, one who didn't give a whit what anyone else thought of him, . Just a delight to read. Included an audio CD of some of his personal recollections of stories and his zany behavior... great book, can't go wrong.

If you are entranced by Feynman, then you are going to have to read the biography Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, by James Gleick. I wish Feynman had lived to be 120 years old. Who knows what else he would have come up with?

Also entranced by Feynman, though I'm a nonscientist forced to stay with his lighter works - if you can call anything Feynman said "light." (You can't.) I first heard of Feynman during the Challenger investigation, and when you ask what else he would've come up with had he lived longer, I think it might have included investigating the 2003 Columbia shuttle accident, with its causes similar in so many ways to Challenger's.

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Here is the Amazon blurb, though I think the book is mostly known for its unreliable narrator:

Twenty-year-old Yale dropout Phillip Dean is traveling Europe aimlessly in a borrowed car with little money, until stopping for a few days in a church-quiet town near Dijon, where he meets Anne-Marie Costallat, a young shop assistant. She quickly becomes to him the real France, its beating heart and an object of pure longing. The two begin an affair both carnal and innocent.

Beautiful and haunting, A Sport and a Pastime is one of the first great American novels to speak frankly of human desire and the yearning for passion free of guilt and shame.

I just finished reading Notorious RBG: the Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Khizhnik.

Nearly a half-century into being a feminist and legal pioneer, something funny happened to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: the octogenarian won the Internet. Across America, people who weren't even born when Ginsburg made her name are tattooing themselves with her face, setting her famously searing dissents to music, and making viral videos in tribute. In a class of its own, and much to Ginsburg's own amusement, is the Notorious RBG Tumblr, which juxtaposes the diminutive but fierce Jewish grandmother with the 350-pound rapper featuring original artwork submitted from around the world.

Notorious RBG: the Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers a look at the Justice and how she changed the world: from her refusal to let the slammed doors of sexism stop her to her innovative legal work, from her before-its-time feminist marriage to her perch on the nation's highest court. As the country struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stands as a testament to how far we can come with a little chutzpah.

I recently read Dark Money by Jane Mayer. I read it because I wanted to learn more about the Koch brothers who are the subject of this book along with their business and political allies. I was disappointed in the book because it was a very biased liberal view of the Kochs that at times seemed like a rant against the Kochs. The Kochs certainly deserve their share of criticism but I would have liked to have seen some objectivity. Also, I thought it was poorly written. It could stand some serious editing and condensing.

This is the story of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, it's chief builder architect Daniel H. Burnham, and of the contemporary Chicago serial killer Herman Mudgett alias H. H. Holmes.

The exposition and world fair which was the size of a City was designed and built in just over 27 months from authorization, employed over 20,000 construction workers, was the first large scale use of alternating current for electrical illumination, and gave us the Ferris Wheel, the Pledge of Allegiance, and Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

This is an excellent book.

"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein |
Wiki article link:Getting Started

"Shoe Dog" by Phil Knight, the founder of Blue Ribbon Sports which later became Nike.

It is his memoir of the history of the company. Right now I am in 1976. The company is experiencing doubling of sales yearly and experiencing severe cash flow problems (an ongoing problem since day 1).

MP173 wrote:"Shoe Dog" by Phil Knight, the founder of Blue Ribbon Sports which later became Nike.

It is his memoir of the history of the company. Right now I am in 1976. The company is experiencing doubling of sales yearly and experiencing severe cash flow problems (an ongoing problem since day 1).

LadyGeek wrote:Hell's Gate, by David Weber and Linda Evans. Two societies at different levels of technology and magic get connected through a multi-world portal. I like the writing style, it's keeping me interested.

Hell Hath No Fury, by David Weber and Linda Evans. This is book 2 of 3 in the Multiverse series. The first half of the book was somewhat boring as the underlying subplots were set in place. Now that the action started, it's interesting again.

The Road to Hell, by David Weber and Linda Evans. Book 3 of 3 in the Multiverse series. The action continues and it's somewhat interesting.

I thought the series had about twice as many characters and subplots as it needed. OTOH, he covered both sides of the story, so I guess it was needed. It was just too much to track at this level of detail.

To some, the glass is half full. To others, the glass is half empty. To an engineer, it's twice the size it needs to be.

Angst wrote:Just finished "Classic Feynman". A collection of vignettes from a wonderful, amazing character. Nobel laureate, iconoclast, irrepressible questioner: Richard P. Feynman, an MIT/Princeton trained Los Alamos theoretical physicist, Cal Tech professor, Challenger space shuttle investigator, one who didn't give a whit what anyone else thought of him, . Just a delight to read. Included an audio CD of some of his personal recollections of stories and his zany behavior... great book, can't go wrong.

At the risk of going off-topic I don't think it's necessarily laudable to "not give a whit what anyone else thinks of you". Maybe if you're a genius like Feynman you could get away with it. It does make for fun reading, I read these books 25 years ago, just after he died. I'm not a genius and I couldn't live my life that way. Much of life depends on those around you, you can't just ignore what people think of you. To a degree maybe you can, but to "not give a whit" about other's opinions doesn't work in the real world, my world. To me it's not a recipe for success. But maybe if I were a genius....

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And I don't think that describes Feynman. I've read much of what he has written and much of what others have written about him. From what I can tell, he was a charming and witty man who made friends easily. Many people thought very highly of him. That doesn't happen to people who don't care.

It could probably be said that he didn't suffer fools gladly. Or perhaps he found fools entertaining and didn't much care what they thought of him!

Listen very carefully. I shall say this only once. (There! I've said it.)

This is an inspiring memoir of a boy growing up poor in a largely dysfunctional family and culture, surrounded by addiction and failure, who through the love and care of grandparents, an older sister and others eludes failure at life and graduates from Yale Law School.

I recommend this book.

"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein |
Wiki article link:Getting Started

And I don't think that describes Feynman. I've read much of what he has written and much of what others have written about him. From what I can tell, he was a charming and witty man who made friends easily. Many people thought very highly of him. That doesn't happen to people who don't care.

It could probably be said that he didn't suffer fools gladly. Or perhaps he found fools entertaining and didn't much care what they thought of him!

People who say "I don't care what anybody thinks of me" usually do. Feynman was (perhaps subconsciously) a genius at self-promotion. He was a revered figure at Caltech, a true superstar, so that made it all work.

OB "suffer fools gladly", it's been said that if you weren't as smart as Feynman, you got to see him every now and then. If you were smarter than Feynman, you never got to see him at all. (Caltech physics grad school lore.)

The span of his personality was immense. My affection for him is also immense (but slightly tempered.)

And I don't think that describes Feynman. I've read much of what he has written and much of what others have written about him. From what I can tell, he was a charming and witty man who made friends easily. Many people thought very highly of him. That doesn't happen to people who don't care.

It could probably be said that he didn't suffer fools gladly. Or perhaps he found fools entertaining and didn't much care what they thought of him!

People who say "I don't care what anybody thinks of me" usually do. Feynman was (perhaps subconsciously) a genius at self-promotion. He was a revered figure at Caltech, a true superstar, so that made it all work.

OB "suffer fools gladly", it's been said that if you weren't as smart as Feynman, you got to see him every now and then. If you were smarter than Feynman, you never got to see him at all. (Caltech physics grad school lore.)

The span of his personality was immense. My affection for him is also immense (but slightly tempered.)

I happen to have the book on my Kindle. The book's title is based mainly on what Feynman's first wife, Arlene, would tell him whenever he would care too much what other people think. This is in a section with the same title.

Earlier in the book, Feynman says Arlene's family was very sensitive to other people's feelings and taught him "to be more sensitive to those kinds of things, too." He goes on to say that "I thought one should have the attitude of ''What do you care what other people think!' I said 'We should listen to other people's opinions and take them into account. Then if they don't make sense and we think they're wrong, then that's that!'"

And I don't think that describes Feynman. I've read much of what he has written and much of what others have written about him. From what I can tell, he was a charming and witty man who made friends easily. Many people thought very highly of him. That doesn't happen to people who don't care.

It could probably be said that he didn't suffer fools gladly. Or perhaps he found fools entertaining and didn't much care what they thought of him!

People who say "I don't care what anybody thinks of me" usually do. Feynman was (perhaps subconsciously) a genius at self-promotion. He was a revered figure at Caltech, a true superstar, so that made it all work.

OB "suffer fools gladly", it's been said that if you weren't as smart as Feynman, you got to see him every now and then. If you were smarter than Feynman, you never got to see him at all. (Caltech physics grad school lore.)

The span of his personality was immense. My affection for him is also immense (but slightly tempered.)

I happen to have the book on my Kindle. The book's title is based mainly on what Feynman's first wife, Arlene, would tell him whenever he would care too much what other people think. This is in a section with the same title.

Earlier in the book, Feynman says Arlene's family was very sensitive to other people's feelings and taught him "to be more sensitive to those kinds of things, too." He goes on to say that "I thought one should have the attitude of ''What do you care what other people think!' I said 'We should listen to other people's opinions and take them into account. Then if they don't make sense and we think they're wrong, then that's that!'"

And I don't think that describes Feynman. I've read much of what he has written and much of what others have written about him. From what I can tell, he was a charming and witty man who made friends easily. Many people thought very highly of him. That doesn't happen to people who don't care.

It could probably be said that he didn't suffer fools gladly. Or perhaps he found fools entertaining and didn't much care what they thought of him!

People who say "I don't care what anybody thinks of me" usually do. Feynman was (perhaps subconsciously) a genius at self-promotion. He was a revered figure at Caltech, a true superstar, so that made it all work.

Just finished reading [again] Reducing the Risk of Black Swans [Swedroe & Grogan, 2014]. I keep reading in this forum that the next shoe is about to drop--When/IF it happens I will be ready. Appendix D [Enough] is a good one for those in retirement and those getting ready to join "The Retiredforce."

This is an inspiring memoir of a boy growing up poor in a largely dysfunctional family and culture, surrounded by addiction and failure, who through the love and care of grandparents, an older sister and others eludes failure at life and graduates from Yale Law School.

I recommend this book.

Hi ruralavalon - reading this also. Have also seen the reviews over the past week in WSJ and NYT that this book helps explain Trump voters - trying to get my head around that view. Good book so far - not trying to make a political statement myself just noting what I have read for reviews.

This is an inspiring memoir of a boy growing up poor in a largely dysfunctional family and culture, surrounded by addiction and failure, who through the love and care of grandparents, an older sister and others eludes failure at life and graduates from Yale Law School.

I recommend this book.

Hi ruralavalon - reading this also. Have also seen the reviews over the past week in WSJ and NYT that this book helps explain Trump voters - trying to get my head around that view. Good book so far - not trying to make a political statement myself just noting what I have read for reviews.

I also saw one of those reviews, and a TV interview of the author. I didn't think that the book was at all political.

I could hardly put the book down. I knew his life turned out well (otherwise he wouldn't be writing a book), but couldn't wait to find out how he got from where he began to where he is now.

"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein |
Wiki article link:Getting Started